Good Samaritan Society - Forest City

Although we did not rate this nursing home highly overall, we want to draw your attention to its nearly flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an A- in this category. Inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This place was assessed 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't consider any of these deficiencies an imminent risk to resident health or safety. A few minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

This nursing home actually received a decent grade in the area of nursing as well. We awarded it a grade of C for that category, which is not a bad score. Nursing scores are largely tied to a facility's nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This is a low total compared with most other nursing homes. Lastly, our nursing scores also consider quality-based measures, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this facility actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is typically an indicator that a facility has sufficient quality controls in place. Many falls can be avoided if a facility provides enough nurses aids to assist its residents.

The third area we graded was short-term care. In that area, we awarded this nursing home a C. In the area of short-term care, we strive to evaluate indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We assess a facility's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. We found that this facility was below average in the two key staffing areas we looked at. It offered fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. It is still important to determine whether this is adversely impacting the quality of care. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who returned home from this facility. We found that 4.5 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was actually well below average.

The next category we assessed is long-term care. Sadly, it received an F for this area, which is an abysmal grade. In a long-term care setting, the facility's primary goal is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. After considering the volume of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination record. We were optimistic to discover that this facility vaccinated 96.5812 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Surprisingly, this facility also fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.